A spring-mounted toy such as a bouncer comprises a seating platform suspended from a support by means of springs. The seating platform may have the form of a horse or other animal which can be straddled by the child. The support is usually designed to rest on the floor or other horizontal surface. Springs are stretched between the front and rear of the seating platform and raised posts or standards on the support so that the seating platform is suspended more or less horizontally above the floor or other horizontal surface at a height such that a child can climb onto and sit on the seating platform and by shifting his or her weight, jounce and bounce as if he were on a bucking horse, for example.
The springs which connect the seating platform to the support have hooks at their opposite ends and usually these hooks hook into eyes mounted to the support and to laterally projecting struts on the seating platform. While the prior spring connections resiliently support the seating platform, they do have some disadvantages. More particularly, all of the springs on a given bouncer toy are not always hooked in the same way between the seating platform and the support. That is, the connections of one spring may be more resistant to pivotal or swinging motion than those of the other springs so that the seating platform has a bouncing motion which is uneven and jerky.
The differences in the actions of the spring connections are due in large part to the design of the spring connections themselves. A typical spring used in this application is a coil spring having an elongated barrel or tubular shape. The two endmost turns of the spring are bent out more or less parallel to the axis of the spring to form integral hooks. However, those hooks may be oriented in various different angles about the spring axis. For example, if the hook at one end of the spring lies in a horizontal plane, the hook at the opposite end of that spring may lie in a horizontal plane, vertical plane or repose at some intermediate angle. Therefore, when hooking the opposite ends of that spring to the eyes on a seating platform and its support, the swiveling motion of the hooks relative to those eyes may differ depending upon the angles at which the hooks hook through the corresponding eyes.
Bear in mind also that the eyes themselves are usually formed by closed hooks having threaded shanks which are bolted to their supporting structures so that those eyes are often free to pivot about their axes further complicating the angular relationships between the spring hooks and the eyes to which they are engaged. The upshot is that when the child bounces up and down on the toy, the hook-eye connections bind to greater or lesser degrees depending upon the angles at which the hooks intercept their corresponding eyes, resulting in less than optimum motion of the seating platform as noted above.
Another disadvantage of the prior spring connections for such toys is that if a child bounces vigorously enough and in a certain way, one or another of the springs may twist about its axis to such an extent that one or both of its hooks can become detached from its corresponding eye so that the seating platform is no longer supported in a stable condition. In other words, the platform may tip to such an extent that the child thereon may fall off. This condition obviously increases the potential for injury to the child.